Fun With Pseudoscience
Mar. 29th, 2002 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_gneechJust finished watching a program on TLC about giants, particularly the notion that there used to be a giant subrace of humans, or multiple giant subraces of humans, who were dwindling by early historical times and are extinct now. This should hardly be exciting ... world mythology, the Bible, etc., all talk about populations of giants, and today there are still giants, such as the Watusi. Heck, by the standard of many cultures of not-too-long-ago, we are ALL giants!
Of course, to please the TV audience, the program then brought out the notion that the various mytho-historical giants were actually space aliens. Using the Sumerian texts about Anaki, giant godlike beings coming down from a tenth planet (Nobihru, IIRC) and interbreeding with humans, they spun an entertaining tale about humanity being genetically engineered by mixing Anaki genetic material with homonids in the Tigris/Euphrates valley, etc., etc., as part of some sort of colonization project. I was particularly entertained by the assertion that astronomers have discovered a "celestial object in approximately the area described by the Sumerian texts," with the heavy implication that the mysterious tenth planet of the ancient titans has at last been found! Stop the presses.
"Celestial object?" Could we possibly be a little more vague? You mean like, say, a rock? Or maybe a comet? I'm guessing that this object is the same one I've heard referred to as Tiamat or Vulcan, which has an extremely eccentric orbit that's more-or-less perpendicular to the rest of the solar system's orbital plane, and which is supposedly one of the many harbingers of doom for humanity as we know it, any time now.
Assuming for the moment that there are intelligent, manlike beings also in our solar system, frankly I can't imagine we haven't noticed 'em by now, no matter how eclectic their orbit is. We have stars catologued out to 50 parsecs from here and have detected black holes by the extremely slight variations they cause in the actions of stars around them ... we're not going to notice a planet right in our backyard, even one hiding behind an eccentric orbit? I don't think so.
Actually, I will say that it would be incredibly nifty to find, say, actual evidence of lost civilizations out in the solar system. That would make me jump up and down with a kind of giddy enthusiasm reserved for the moments when authority gets smacked down the hardest. I've posted about Saturnism before ... the way the church of scientific orthodoxy shrieks in the presence of these heretics almost makes me wish they were right, just on general principle. Wouldn't it be cool if, say, the reason we don't hear from the Anaki, is because their world got knocked all out-of-sorts by some sort of cataclysm and sent off to the depths of space -- which is why they sent a colony to Earth around 6,000 B.C., etc., etc.?
It would also be cool if I owned the rights to Conan the Barbarian, but that isn't true, either. :)
Anyway, given the quirky nature of evolution, the complexity of humans from both a biological and psychological/cultural standpoint, and the balkanized nature of early humanity, I have no doubt that there have been not just a few, but many "sub-races" -- many of which probably shared the planet at the same time. Imagine Norse mythology, with dwarves under the mountains, giants on top of them, and "normal humans" in the middle ... now imagine that dwarves are simply a diminutive, insular subculture ... and that the giants are a large-framed, also-insular subculture ... and realize that they are all simply expressions of the diverse possibilities inherent in human beings ... then not only does it make perfect sense that there would be races of giants, it's almost inevitable! Space aliens need not apply.
Oh, the program did have one idea that I thought was interesting: one person suggested that the thinning of the ozone layer, which by his description has been happening for eons (contrary to environmentalist orthodoxy), has significantly shortened the lifespan of most life on Earth, including humans. According to this theory, the reason people in the Bible etc. live so long, is not because of any exaggeration by the people making those records, nor any theological closeness to God or descent from Adam -- it's because people in antediluvian times weren't getting bombarded with the same amounts of ultraviolet radiation that we are! That, I find to be a fascinating theory.
-The Gneech, putting on some more sunscreen, just in case
Of course, to please the TV audience, the program then brought out the notion that the various mytho-historical giants were actually space aliens. Using the Sumerian texts about Anaki, giant godlike beings coming down from a tenth planet (Nobihru, IIRC) and interbreeding with humans, they spun an entertaining tale about humanity being genetically engineered by mixing Anaki genetic material with homonids in the Tigris/Euphrates valley, etc., etc., as part of some sort of colonization project. I was particularly entertained by the assertion that astronomers have discovered a "celestial object in approximately the area described by the Sumerian texts," with the heavy implication that the mysterious tenth planet of the ancient titans has at last been found! Stop the presses.
"Celestial object?" Could we possibly be a little more vague? You mean like, say, a rock? Or maybe a comet? I'm guessing that this object is the same one I've heard referred to as Tiamat or Vulcan, which has an extremely eccentric orbit that's more-or-less perpendicular to the rest of the solar system's orbital plane, and which is supposedly one of the many harbingers of doom for humanity as we know it, any time now.
Assuming for the moment that there are intelligent, manlike beings also in our solar system, frankly I can't imagine we haven't noticed 'em by now, no matter how eclectic their orbit is. We have stars catologued out to 50 parsecs from here and have detected black holes by the extremely slight variations they cause in the actions of stars around them ... we're not going to notice a planet right in our backyard, even one hiding behind an eccentric orbit? I don't think so.
Actually, I will say that it would be incredibly nifty to find, say, actual evidence of lost civilizations out in the solar system. That would make me jump up and down with a kind of giddy enthusiasm reserved for the moments when authority gets smacked down the hardest. I've posted about Saturnism before ... the way the church of scientific orthodoxy shrieks in the presence of these heretics almost makes me wish they were right, just on general principle. Wouldn't it be cool if, say, the reason we don't hear from the Anaki, is because their world got knocked all out-of-sorts by some sort of cataclysm and sent off to the depths of space -- which is why they sent a colony to Earth around 6,000 B.C., etc., etc.?
It would also be cool if I owned the rights to Conan the Barbarian, but that isn't true, either. :)
Anyway, given the quirky nature of evolution, the complexity of humans from both a biological and psychological/cultural standpoint, and the balkanized nature of early humanity, I have no doubt that there have been not just a few, but many "sub-races" -- many of which probably shared the planet at the same time. Imagine Norse mythology, with dwarves under the mountains, giants on top of them, and "normal humans" in the middle ... now imagine that dwarves are simply a diminutive, insular subculture ... and that the giants are a large-framed, also-insular subculture ... and realize that they are all simply expressions of the diverse possibilities inherent in human beings ... then not only does it make perfect sense that there would be races of giants, it's almost inevitable! Space aliens need not apply.
Oh, the program did have one idea that I thought was interesting: one person suggested that the thinning of the ozone layer, which by his description has been happening for eons (contrary to environmentalist orthodoxy), has significantly shortened the lifespan of most life on Earth, including humans. According to this theory, the reason people in the Bible etc. live so long, is not because of any exaggeration by the people making those records, nor any theological closeness to God or descent from Adam -- it's because people in antediluvian times weren't getting bombarded with the same amounts of ultraviolet radiation that we are! That, I find to be a fascinating theory.
-The Gneech, putting on some more sunscreen, just in case
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no subject
Date: 2002-03-29 09:04 pm (UTC)I had a point to make... and now I've forgotten it. Oh, well. I need to go to bed.
no subject
Date: 2002-03-29 09:56 pm (UTC)«chuckles»
Vulcan was supposed to be within the orbit of Mercury, because Mercury's Perihelion point moved more than it should. Vulcan was gotten rid of by Einstien's E=MC², as the mass equivalent of the energy of the Sun's gravity field exactly accounts for the movement of Mercury's perihelion.
Tiamat, I've not heard of.
The eccentric 10th `planet' is now hypothesized to be either a brown dwarf (supraJovian planet) or a red dwarf star. The accepted name for it is Nemesis, though that doesn't mean that if/when it is discovered, it will actually be named Nemesis by the discoverer and the International Astronomical Union...
Most of the stars that have had distances calculated are in the ecliptic, the overwhelmingly VAST majority of the rest are in the nerthern celestial hemisphere. If Sol does have a companion, at or near aphelion (which may be out as far as 1 light year, or further) in the southern celestial hemisphere, there is a possibility that it may actually been catalogued already, but noone has double checked it... or it may be in line with something else, brighter which makes it even harder to see. Like maybe the Magellanic Clouds? I've actually read one possibility that Proxima Centauri, rather than being Alpha Centauri c, should actually be classified as Sol b. Now, this I won't say I beleive, as I beleive they have actually plotted Proxima's orbit. but, if I remember right, Proxima is just a little bit closer to the Centauri system than Sol, so maybe Centauri has 'just' captured it within the past several million years...
«end pedantic mode»
Sorry...
no subject
Date: 2002-03-30 09:17 am (UTC)Does this mean that Proxima Centauri b is in a stationary orbit between PC-a and Sol?
Also, how far away is PC-a from Sol, then?
(I love astronomy.)
Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 10:28 am (UTC)ACa is a star almost identical to Sol, just a little bit smaller. Both are G class stars. ACb is a class K star, with an orbit of approx. 80 years. (I think about as far from ACa as Neptune is from Sol)
I do have to retract something in my previous entery. ACc/Proxima is definately part of the AC system. I was thinking Proxima was approx. 2 lightyears from Sol, about at the midpoint. Is actually 4.2ly, whereas ACa is 4.3ly. Proxima's period is in the neighborhood of 1 million years.
One of the neat things about the recent planetary discoveries, are the SuperJovian planets that are closer to their primary than Mercury.
Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Those stars and their interesting three-body orbital dance have been the subject of many a gravitational simulation.
I suspect that many non-astronomers are getting the impression that almost all of the rest of the planets in the Galaxy are big honkin' Jovian gasbags.
The little ones are, currently, just very hard to see. And we're developing more clever methods of detection, and making progress.
It amazes me, considering what we can detect, that people seriously consider that we've overlooked an extra "star" in our own solar system.
And the notion that it is out of the plane of the ecliptic, somehow making it harder to see, is particularly absurd -- in those sparsely populated regions of sky, it would be even more prominent.
The next thing is that we have discovered it, and have a conspiracy amongst thousands of astronomers in a hundred countries to "hush it up". Arrrgh.
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Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 12:50 pm (UTC)Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 12:58 pm (UTC)Besides, I have enjoyed writing just such gravitaitonal simulations in my youth (which was perhaps back before we figured out that the Earth went around the Sun). Do a Google search on my RL last name and the word "orrery" -- I expect, with your personal background, you are very familiar with what an orrery is.
My little contribution has been made a part of some university courses -- which I discovered only recently, and tickled me no end.
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Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 01:44 pm (UTC)Don't know your RL last name or I'd look it up...
You got something in University courses? Cool!!
Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 02:51 pm (UTC)Do you know how to use a Tycho (sp?) globe, too?
Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 03:00 pm (UTC)That is the correct spelling.
I don't even know how Tycho used his nose! ;)
He was famed for his astounding attention to detail, and his extremely precise (especially for the time!) measurements of astronomical phenomena.
He had eyes and a brain worth their weight in gold -- but his nose that was supposed to be silver turned out not to be -- it had left a green stain on his skull when the skull was unearthed.
The movie "2001" pays tribute to him by staging the discovery of the Monolith in "his" crater -- the Monolith is designated TMA-1 for "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly - One".
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Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 01:42 pm (UTC)I didn't «know» all the info I quoted. Looked it up.
plus I've always been interested in astronomy, and HAVE absorbed a lot of info over the years...
You got to work in a planetarium for a year?!
«jealous»
Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 02:52 pm (UTC)Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
Date: 2002-03-30 01:35 pm (UTC)I won't say it's probable, but possible. Esp. to have a companion in the fuzzy area between a SuperJovian planet and a red dwarf star.
My thinking, with south of the ecliptic, esp. the part that is only visible south of the equator, is that it's not been studied/mapped as thoroughly.
Remember, Barnard wasn't the first to see/catalogue Barnards Star. He was the one who put several catalogue enteries together to realize that it was the fastest moving star... Uranus was catalogued several times...
If Nemesis is near aphelion, in the far south of the celestial sphere... If it's a red dwarf, may have been catalogued, but no paralax has been calculated. SuperJovian/brown dwarf possible not seen yet.
With a period of say 500,000 years, only gone through .06% of orbit. since modern astronomy (300years)
Re: Alpha Centauri/Rigel Kent
In fact, some quite good scopes have been in operation for a very long time indeed down South (Australia and South America), and if you think about the Earth's 23.45 degree tilt, you know that a northern hemisphere site can observe quite a lot, and one near the equator will be able to see ALL of the sky over a six month period.
One of the best optical ground-based scopes in existence is in Hawai'i.
Oh, did I say ground-based? How about that Hubble? -- recently updated again -- IT doesn't have any sort of problem with horizons.
A brown dwarf or Jovian object will be quite radio-active (not radioactive ;) ) and our radio telescopes can see all of the sky. In fact, Jupiter itself is quite noisy -- we used to tune in Jupiter's peculiar static on old television sets just off of Channel 13.
The gravitational effect would have been extroadinary as well -- we are now able to resolve the position of the Moon relative to the earth within a half-inch, and this admits of no possibility of a solar companion.
With nothing to hide behind, and a footprint like the recent "club-footed Bigfoot", it would be easily spotted -- and worth a Nobel prize. No takers.
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no subject
Date: 2002-03-29 10:03 pm (UTC)If the extended lives of the Biblical patriarchs is counted as lunar months, instead of solar years, it actually comes out about average... (if I'm remembering right)
no subject
Date: 2002-03-29 10:05 pm (UTC)Many sub-races of humans...
There's been a number of homo sapiens, actually. The most famous (and one that survived until 35000 years ago) are the Neanderthals.
*grin* There's lots of references for them, too.
Re: Many sub-races of humans...
Mur
no subject
Date: 2002-03-30 04:38 am (UTC)I have to agree though that I think if there were any races of giants or dwarves, that they were just the expressions of the wide variations in humanity.
no subject
Date: 2002-03-30 06:50 am (UTC)The problem is, most in the audience accept these half baked mental meanderings as being on an equal footing with science and real knowledge. It troubles me -- and to put this "information" on something called "The Learning Channel" is sad indeed.
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no subject
Date: 2002-03-30 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-03-30 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
My encountering those two characters in The Suburban Jungle, and noting how they were handled, was what inspired my first correspondence with The Gneech.
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no subject
Well, we never did get around to addressing this. I have a reference book -- ten pounds or so, on paleoclimatology -- the study of the Earth's climate back as far as we can go. Some very clever determinations have been made going back literally billions of years; the history of Man on this planet is a few million or about 0.1% of that time frame. Recorded history, the point at which a "Giants in the earth" and long-lived people became the subject of legend, is only 0.1% of that time, or 0.0001% of the period that we have information about. I remember looking at work on the Maunder Minimum centered around 1700 or so...
(looked it up: 70 years from 1645 and 1715). There is a hypothesis that is bearing fruit that total solar output is indexed to sunspot activity. During those years there were very few sunspots -- perhaps fewer than 10 -- as opposed to a normal 100,000 or so for that time span.
Certain kinds of radiation, at the surface, would have been reduced during this time. But the production of C14 would have been increased because the protective blanket, "powered" by the solar wind, would have been reduced greatly. Tree rings from the period do indeed show significant increases in c14.
Implication: Chilly, perhaps, but not especially healthy. We've now got evidence for such multi-hundred year cycles in other stars. And this seems potentially to be the major cause for the "global warming" trend, to the extent that it is real.
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no subject
Insightful Producer Wanted... apply at Discovery Channel.
Prerequsitises: Able to operate a VCR, a TV, and the Cable Box, all at the same time. Able to not only identify a camera lense, but know which end you look into. Ability to know what a microphone is and how to use it for more than just creating audio tracks.
Pay: Good, but limited benifits. Phsychatry and method acting classes in your spare time and when not meeting a deadline;
Job Description: Being slowly driven insane by viewer demographics that do not meet up with new show ideas. Actors who only want what they can get out of you, and coworkers who would much rather eat a donut, or see the Crocodile Hunter get bitten by a venemous snake in the genitals.
Oooo... now there's entertainment!
----
Camstone (the sleep deprived) FOx
Re: Insightful Producer Wanted... apply at Discovery Channel.
Date: 2002-04-01 07:06 am (UTC)no subject
But I am afraid that it generally falls into the category of "more than you wanted to know".
At least this is not precisely the same as "too much information". ;)
And hello, Camstone! I've heard much about you.
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